come anticipate guillermo del toro's "at the mountains of madness" with me

true. lots of nods to the old ones in mignola's comics to begin with though. much more so than in the movies.

isn't this what CGI was invented for?

this is what multi-million dollar 3D CGI was invented for

i.e., hell yes

Yeah, that was kinda what I was getting at.

(I have yet to see a nu-3D movie but I imagine the possibilities for non-Euclidean architecture could be mind-boggling)

if del toro can't do this no one can

i guess? i mean, when i say "cant exist in 3d space" what i mean is "cant physically exist such that the human mind can process them" which is what i always understood to be going on in hpl stories. like--what i imagine those descriptions to be is of stuff that literally cant be imagined, in some sense. its what i love about lovecraft!

thats an xxxxp or something

with 3d you probably can't drive people mad, but you could make a few of them barf.

here's hoping for some barf.

come anticipate assayas' "at the mountains of madness" with me

I took it more to be like, perceptual illusions that fucked with the human mind's concepts of space and time.

x-post to max

would be funny if they advertised this film with a disclaimer that seeing it might DRIVE YOU INSANE

too bad brakhage is dead

contenderizer and i are talking about the same cthulhu film i think.

there are some other ones floating around that are utter shit tho

they should have a nurse outside the theater in case anyone DIES OF FRIGHT

this one?

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHuY2wXTd0o

i have that one on dvd, it's bitchin'

pretty faithful, too!

3d really needs to embrace it's chintzy william castle heritage

as soon as i make this argt i realize i don't know what i'm talking about

no way you're totally right!

think about it! dudes dressed up as shoggoths popping out of the aisles at the right moment of the movie. it would be awesome.

miike should be making 3d movies instead of cameron

I took it more to be like, perceptual illusions that fucked with the human mind's concepts of space and time.

x-post to max

― procedurally generated pidyn (Masonic Boom), Thursday, July 29, 2010 5:23 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

aw no man i always conceived of those descriptions as like... stuff completely incomprehensible by the human mind. not 'illusions' but i dunno. crazy n-dimensional stuff of which humans can only grasp a portion of. i like reading him next to irritating hard sci-fi authors who are super concerned w/ making their stuff scientifically accurate to a certain extent, b/c hpl goes in the completely opposite direction--if its not literally impossible w/in the realm of scientific thought than he doesnt care

my reading/interpretation follows max's - always thought this was key to the Elder Gods/Cthulhu mythos stuff, that these are things that are beyond the grasp of our pitifully limited consciousnesses, and thus when we come into contact with them, our minds are broken, are souls crushed, etc.

our souls

OK, I see what you mean. Kind of like the bit in Cosmos where Carl Sagan talks about the Tesseract and shows that weird hypercube with the 45% angles and says "now imagine if all the angles were 90%" - that it's hard to perceptually grasp, but you can imagine it. I do think there are ways of getting around that, if it's cleverly done.

I suppose what I mean by "perceptual illusion" is that the brain can't quite render it properly, so it's the kind of thing that shifts every time you look at it, in ways that it shouldn't shift if it were a natural angle.

(But then again, I always think of the towers of the Barbican of being vaguely Lovecraftian because their angles aren't 90% at the corners, so they seem to be further away and closer than they appear as you walk up towards them, because the brain keeps trying to straighten them.)

(But then again, I always think of the towers of the Barbican of being vaguely Lovecraftian because their angles aren't 90% at the corners, so they seem to be further away and closer than they appear as you walk up towards them, because the brain keeps trying to straighten them.)

Had this after a Christmas drink round there once.

No, it's not the drink, the Barbican tower really is like that. I went to a party in a flat in it, and it's just not quite square.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/85/258902697_c315f904e9.jpg

^^^^^^^puny human brane cannot comprehend

Christ, thank God for that. I was busy worrying about the nameless horror that was going to confront me at every corner, but it was just an architectural quirk. (Actually wasn't the house in The Haunting built like that? That film allus gave me the willies as well).

xpost No!!!!! (Leaves final insane thoughts on stylogram and sends to cousin)

ya i agree with max/shakey

i think you could think of some fun ways to suggest that shit though, i mean what HP lovecraft is also talking about is stuff that shouldn't literally be even write-aboutable so

can't remember the plot to this story, but i know the typical lovecraft arc - is this is going to be 90 minutes of atmosphere and then 5 minutes of face-ripping CGI?

A huge part of the story in this one is basically just the protagonists exploring and figuring out the history of the Elder Things by deciphering murals

good

xpost -- Thus my reference to that above y'see. :-D

they're probably gonna have to sex it up a bit to make the movie more palatable for most people. hopefully del toro will at least keep the mutant penguins!

by "sex it up" i of course mean "give the monsters boobs"

Or they could just adapt this

Meantime, this actually looks of possible interest.

http://www.ibtimes.com/data/articleimgs/42030-people-guillermo-del-toro.jpg

"the tits on the mutant penguins will be truly extraordinary"

xpost -- have fun with the sneak preview.

"This scenario is a complex one. Mood and confusion play large parts in the evolving story—confusion over loyalties, allegiances, identities, and even the morality of duty. In the end the investigators find great responsibilities in their hands, and discover that the burden is not one they can ever put down."

find out what happens when explorers stop being polite...and start getting real

that's in ref. to Ned's link a few posts back

Lengthy interview with del Toro, contains this:

DNY: As director, you could have gone to work for Warner Bros, doing a Wizard of Oz movie, and, I’ve heard, the studio wanted you to resurrect Superman...

Del Toro: There were other projects [he laughs].

DNY: That’s diplomatic. Why did you instead choose At the Mountains of Madness, a much harder picture to get greenlit?

Del Toro : I came out of The Hobbit, and it was the biggest heartbreak I’ve experienced as a filmmaker, because I will never know what that movie would have been. I was very mindful that I didn’t want to have a rebound movie, as happens sometimes when somebody comes off a long romance. There were very big, lucrative, beautiful projects on the table, and I was developing one of them with Jim Cameron. In my stubborn fashion, I slipped Jim the script, again, when we were meeting on that other project. He said, you still want to do that? To his credit, he said, well, let’s pursue that instead. This is the movie I most want to do. I haven’t done horror in a long time. Devil’s Backbone tries to make the ghost a victim, and not a scary character. Blade 2 is more action than horror. I really love the genre and last time I did a horror film was Mimic, and that was not a horror for the right reasons. That’s a muscle I want to flex. Frankenstein has the mitigating factor that for a length of the narrative, you favor the monster. For horror to work, you have to be afraid. You have to keep the monster in a black and white light. I mostly love monsters too much to see them in that light, but Lovecraft allows me to.

DNY: Because the villain is an otherworldly species?

Del Toro: Because the proportion is so big. When the monster has a dimension that allows you to humanize it, that’s the route I usually want to go. The cosmic proportions of the Lovecraft horror are so immense, it forces you to find humanity in other aspects of the tale. You can keep the monster inhuman, remote and scary, which is a great benefit.

DNY: Universal needed to be convinced to make this film, which is a bold play. I’ve heard there was a meeting with you, Jim, Ron Meyer and his Universal execs that swung the deal. How did you walk away with a yes?

Del Toro: Adam Fogelson and Donna Langley have always been friends of the project. The screenplay that is on the internet is an old screenplay, and the one I gave to Jim and Universal is different. When I came back from The Hobbit, I gave my Jimmy Stewart Mr. Smith Goes to Washington speech at Universal. I pitch with heart on sleeve, and Donna and Adam were moved, liked the new take and said, let’s develop it hard. But I wanted to be shooting by June next year. I didn’t want to let another year go by without shooting, it made no sense. So Jim, Jon Landau, Rae Sanchini, came with me for that big meeting. Jim and I were able to do a double tag team, talking about the world and the experience that Mountains would be. We found new ways for them to see it, and they agreed to investigate it further. We are not green lit, we are still budgeting and designing, and we are partners on this. I believe in my heart we are going to be making this movie in June of next year. We are budgeting the creatures and met with Spectral Motion and ILM, where Dennis Muren told me the sweetest words ever when he said, no one has ever seen monsters like this. That was truly one of the highlights of my fat life, a demigod like Muren saying that.

Nothing much new but:

In a conversation with 24 Frames Monday, Del Toro said he's actively engaged with the project and moving ahead with the tale of the mysteries and monsters on an Antarctic expedition. In fact, just last week Del Toro met with studio Universal for the so-called summit meeting in which he walked executives through his concepts and models for the movie. The script is also ready, he said.

So how soon could shooting begin? This summer, he hopes, and possibly as early as June, according to the filmmaker.

And lest you think producer James Cameron is simply putting his name on it while he's off working on "Avatar 2", think again: The "Terminator" director was present for the summit meeting and has been offering Del Toro some notes.

"In his subtle style he said to me, 'I have a few notes, but I have one fatal flaw [that I see in the script],'" Del Toro recalled. "He pointed out one thing that was big. I've been thinking about this for 35 years, and he pointed out something I'd never seen."

"There's not enough of that mystical rainforest giggling children shit."

man i wish i liked gdt more as a storyteller... he's smart and has great taste and has his heart in the right place but with a couple exceptions his movies are usually kinda bad

great del toro profile from new yorker, has some info on this:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/07/110207fa_fact_zalewski

shub niggurath's clit

Can someone debunk the Tom Cruise lead rumors so I can relax and know this movie will be excellent?

Even though he would guarantee the movie actually being made which would be nice. But I just don't want him on screen.

tekeli-li tekeli-li

I liked this a lot!

i think the yardstick is if you liked Crimson Peak you’ll at least find this more tolerable than most ppl imo.

it’s very Bad Dads Gothic/telenovella and i enjoyed the ott-ness of that in particular, the shirtlessness & the storms & the reds, all great.

unfortunately i think Isaac maybe has too much natural warmth/charisma to portray Victor with the coldness required - he’s a little miscast. which sucks bc i do really love Oscar Isaac in everything always. also the accent was a little :/ but i think the character is forced to indicate a lot very quickly so you don’t get much sense of him except what yr told.

Elordi was great as the monster, the movement work was excellent, just a terrific performance that felt like a good marriage of actor + makeup effects where you get the combined effect of both without one overshadowing the other.

i think though Elordi’s success as the monster in the story is also bc it’s a character that is SO emotional (vs Victor), delToro’s inherent sympathies gives the monster more to do & more depth. I mean the monster has that benefit in the book to some degree too so that is kinda baked-in but still, i definitely felt even more of an imbalance there.

i didnt like the Waltz stuff at all, it felt like he was just added to explain where the money & the bodies came from - all of his stuff & most of the actiony ship stuff I could have done away with completely in favor of giving Victor & even Mia Goth more development idk

but i found it really beautiful and mostly pretty enjoyable as a monster movie/gothic lit/guillermo nerd

also quite funny in places! the confession scene w Mia Goth was v funny

shoutout to costume designer Kate Hawley. Stunning! (same costumer for Crimson Peak so, goated obv) every single Mia Goth costume she looked like an ornate Victorian insect, just incredible stuff

I didn't enjoy Crimson Peak at all. And the things about this that annoyed me were similar to the reasons I disliked CP. That said, this is a better film

I prefer the grittier, subtler Del Toro of the Pan's Labyrinth / Devil's Backbone years, and i always forget that he's moved on to a kind of heightened camp, luxuriating in gothic signifiers, elaborate costumes and scenery, fantastical setpieces, and a near Burton-esque level of campiness.

I wasn't really sure what I was.menat to take away from this -Shelley's philosophical and moral musings were all but dispensed with, and yet every line was delivered as though it were imbued with meaning.

For me, Victor Frankenstein is a solitary obsessive driven to madness and eventually revulsion by the significance of his work.

Del Toro's Victor is pretty much just a conniving and cowardly asshole whose morals and motivations seem to switch on a dime, with little reason. One minute he's practically nuzzling the Creature, fascinated by it; next he's chaining him up and violently thrashing him, disappointed that he can't say more than the word "Victor".

My favourite parts were actually the parts on the ice and the middle section with the blind man.

Well, obviously Victor takes after his dad in a lot of ways.

So is that all it's really saying? Like father like son?

It was told as a fairytale imo so not sure we're gonna get some deep psychological revelations about fathers and sons, but I thought within that form it was quite neat and symmetrical in a way I enjoyed.

The two brothers provide an alternative model to lfls from the start. del Toro is unsubtle enough already, you don’t need to reduce him further to divine an actively stupid intent!

I'm not absolutely sure what you mean there. Personally, I don't feel satisfied by his sudden switch into sadism. Like you say, if it's just a matter of a fairytale-simple "wicked stepfather" narrative then fair enough.

But "He suddenly decided to treat his creation cruelly because he is an asshole and his dad was an asshole" is a far cry from the themes within Frankenstein. From what I remember of the book, Victor's upbringing is far from cruel, and his parents are very nurturing.

And even if that's not the point of this film, it's not a very interesting idea in itself. I was almost expecting, when it turned out he was being bankrolled by a Crimean arms dealer, to hint at an allegory about AI and our relationship with it.

But much as every line of dialogue seemed to be delivered with profound meaning - Elizabeth's challenges and The Creature's own musings while in the rural sanctuary - they didn't really amount to anything more than "No it's YOU who is the monster".

Then at the end, after everything they've been through and so many snapped necks and drowned sailors, Victor and the Creature just seem to forgive each other - not because they have each reached a point of enlightenment, but because they seem knackered.

I left thinking "Well what was I meant to take away from this after two and a half hours?" Is it just a romp? Am i asking too much of this film to have a coherent theme or moral centre? Or is Del Toro just stuck telling more-or-less the same story over and over again?

Victor and the Creature just seem to forgive each other - not because they have each reached a point of enlightenment, but because they seem knackered.

I think I mentioned it after I saw it, but this reminded me of the end of "Blade Runner," where creation/erstwhile antagonist surprisingly flips the script through the particularly human attribute of empathy. Not particularly deep, there or here, but it's imo effective. In "Blade Runner," of course, the angry and frustrated Batty's empathetic resolution is ultimately driven by a realization of his mortality. The similarly angry and frustrated Monster in this movie is faced with a different dilemma, immortality, but quickly comes to the same conclusion. I would have liked to see this movie show the Monster's evolution toward this conclusion a little better; he seemed a sensitive sweetheart from the start.

That's OTM

I don't think it is a sudden switch to sadism, the film implies the passing of time and a festering disappointment. Time in the film is generally moving at a decent canter in the way it often does in story within a story.

I don't think this film is particularly complex but if you think what's being said is "he is an asshole because his dad is an asshole" then I think you're missing some fairly unsubtle and constant theme building throughout. He hates his creation because he doesn't believe it's alive, since it can't communicate, and this means he thinks he's failed, and it represents his failure. Then in the end he realises that the real free will or genuine independent life is the rebellious rampaging depressive we made along the way.

They both cease to judge each other as they come to a shared understanding that their ability to be different gives them something to love in the other. Their reconciliation is if anything too perfect and plotted, so it's wrong to say it happens for no reason. It's quite a sentimental father son journey!

It's obv fairly cheesey I guess and kinda hammered home but I still sort of liked it as a fairytale. This is why I disagree it's a story about them being the same, it's about them being different, and each realising this means the other has in some way succeeded. Albeit with the help of a magic blind man in a hut in the woods.

Feels a bit daft but it really went big on this with such a huge do you see type ending that I think it can't be critiqued as empty, just for plenty of other reasons.

Fair enough.

For me that's a dissatisfying and unnecessary deviation from the story of Frankenstein. While it works (if flimsily - ffs you gave it LIFE, is that not enough?) as a plot explanation, and to some extents a quirky fairytale movie, to me it's doing Shelley's book and the fundamental ideas behind it a disservice.

Victor and the Creature just seem to forgive each other

Heavily prefigured on the Creature's part by the old blind man telling him the importance of forgiveness. I agree that none of this is very subtle. The real lesson or moral arrives with the ship captain telling his men they're going home and giving up pursuit of the Pole — because that way lies madness!

xpost i mean idk, fairly sure if i googled 'themes frankenstein book' some of the same things this film gets at would be there. doesn't mean you have to enjoy it.

the entire thing is that he doesn't think he has given it life, he thinks it is not alive. then he realises, thanks to the slightly forced blind man sidequest which lets the creature learn to speak, that he was wrong. and the creature's ability to forgive him concludes that realisation.

also lol i forget that the ship captain too learned a lesson. i know it's sort of dumb but i found it mildly refreshing for a film to go so freely into sentimentality. idk, it felt quite brave.

Also, obv. the movie is very Catholic, not just in the usual Jesus/back to life way, but in those deep-seated philosophies of forgiveness/confession (which of course Victor at one point very literally corrupts to his own sacrilegious purposes). Just as the monster learns to forgive, so too does Victor finally acknowledge his own guilt/failings, at least to an extent. Again, yeah, not subtle, but the whole sequence on the boat is a damned man recognizing his fate/status and finally confessing his sins, in parallel to the monster's own ethical (if also pretty superficial) journey. So in this way we get man (Victor) playing God, and God (monster) becoming man (which is also very Jesus-y).

iirc gdt said that this version was intended to be mexican af so i think the catholic sentimentality has gotta be part of that

https://deadline.com/2025/10/oscar-isaac-guillermo-del-toro-frankenstein-mexican-catholic-1236572220

okay this is oscar isaac quote but yeah:

Isaac added, “And it’s this very European story, but told through a very Latin-American, Mexican, Catholic point-of-view. So, it was just high passion all the time.”

Biggest surprise for me in hearing Del Toro talk about this film is that he said there was no intention of sexual attraction between Goth and Elordi's characters, when I was watching the film I was expecting that that kind of relationship was going to develop.

is Oscar Isaac nude in this

oh yes

Xps this happened a lot in this film, I felt. It kept breadcrumbing ideas and glimmers of plotlines but never really followed through with them.

Elizabeth's character was set-up to present a counterbalance to Victor's masculine hubris.

But this all came undone very quickly for me; first when she was moved into the role of a secret love interest, then when all her protestations and challenges appeared to boil down to her fancying the Creature.

Both those narrative threads were frayed at the ends, and got largely abandoned almost as soon as they were taken up. And that's a shame because they could have done so much more to flesh-out Elizabeth as one of the only female characters in the film. She becomes largely unimportant to the plot, despite being set up as a major character near the start.

Instead poor Mia Goth ends up being a clotheshorse to hang fancy costumes on.

I thought the monster would try to revive and marry her, but instead we got an odd frenemies trip to the North Pole for some reason

Not sure how him pursuing her made her more like him.